Hrmm...
Well, The DM system is pretty much me just rolling random rooms off of a table, going to additional tables if neccessary (NPCs, Room Contents, Monster Types, Items, etc.) Then I just use the standard method to figure out everything the players want to do.

Arkbrik and I had a little discussion on the starting equipment. The principle is to give the players each 30 cions, 3 rations of food and tools that befit their skills.
And there is the problem: Someone who has distributed his skill points in ten different skills would need up to ten different sets of tools. Someone who specializes in few skills would start with much less equipment.

One way to balance that would be to give each player three items, one each for his best three skills (or two items plus a weapon, if there is no weapon skill among the best three).

It would be preferable if all item sets are about the same value. To determine this value will not be an easy task.
Some items like are quite powerfull because they are hard to get and very usefull.
An amboss and a set of metalworking tools for example: How long would a player have to work to produce something comparable? You need a smiths workshop to produce more tools but without pickaxe and showl it is hard to mine the iron you need to craft the ironworking tools,....

On another note: Are there skill modifieres for tools? Can someone try to chop trees without an axe, mine stone and iron without a pickaxe, harvest crops without a hoe?
Will there be a bonus if you use a very good tool, womething like a crafting overshot by a master smith with a natural 10-roll? Will an overshot influence something like that at all?

Edit: I can think of several ways to produce food. The more advanced the method is, the better the outcome should be at same skill level. Farming should be more productive in the long run than hunting, because you have to invest much time, effort and ressources first.
You could use some guidelines like: The more time and resources were used to prepare, the more food is produced (in average). There could also be variations in the dependability or rate of personal danger. While hunting, you risk to be attacked and hurt by your pray. Using traps would let you avoid the danger, but you have to build the traps first and set them up. After that you only need to check if you caught something and you can use the same traps several times. Some kinds of traps are able to catch the pray alive. Maybe you could use one of your rations a bait for bigger beasts, but then there should be a chance of the big win.
Hunting and trapping also have the problem that there is only a limited number of animals.

How about starting with 10 extra gold coins per item that you don't have? It will impossible to calculate the exact value of items since they are only worth as much as players are willing to pay for them, but 10 is a nice round number.

On using tools, I think that varies from case to case. You could harvest plants with your bare hands, but not mine stone. But if you have a tool to harvest with you can get its quality bonus to your harvesting roll (but you still can't roll higher than 10).

If a +4 smith rolls a 6, for a total of 10, they will produce a +6 item.

Remus: Harry... I'm a werewolf.
Harry: Are you fucking serious?
Remus: Well yes, but I don't see how that applies here.

Tools shouldn't be too powerfull. And they should never be more powerfull than invested skill points. Otherwise there would be no point in the skill system. A master with a masterfull tool would only come up with results 10 1d6 + 4 (skill) + 5 (tool) => 10 or higher
A +6 tool would make a 4th skill point in this skill useless.

So tools should never give a bonus greater then 2. And to get that, you either have to kill a legendary beast or get a total overshot in crafting.

Advanced overshot rules: When a player rolle 6 (overshot), in special situations the GM can decide to roll another d6 to determine if a critical success with additional effects occurs.
Example 1: Crafting of tools or weapons: Normal skill role determines, if you succeed in crafting the tool and its quality in terms of shabby, average or fine. If the player is a skilled blacksmith (+3 or higher) and roles a 6, the GM roles another d6. On 1-5 nothing special happenes and the smith produces a tool af fine quality ("normal overshot"). If the second dice shows a 6, too, the smith got very lucky and produces something extraordinary, if not to say legendary. If it is a weapon, it should should either do bonus damage or have a unique ability (like a chance for bleeding wounds or stunning the enemy) and it should get its own name.

Edit: Questions concerning the current game1. It is possible to get XP during a fight after all? I thought you can only earn XP in normal actions and not during fights because the longer the fight lasts the more dice you roll, but only have to spent one action.
2. Did I only dream that I trapped a moose? I neither got the XP nor the 6 rations I should have earned.

Cooperative actionsIt should be possible for several characters to assist each other and cooperate at special actions. This is most important in fights against bigger monsters that you of course attack simultaniously instead of one after another because you know the first one to go will most likely not survive.
Bigger structures are not errected in a few hours. You need several actions to complete them. The more people are working on such a structure, the faster it will be ready.
Some tasks are difficult and assistance would be appreciated. When one player assists another successfully, he provides a bonus the his roll. (Does not work during a fight!)

Difficulty modifierSome tasks are harder than others. Sneaking up on a sleeping human is nothing compared to sneaking up on a legendary beast. And much less risky. Forging a fine sword is harder than forging pans and kettles.
In that case, the GM may add a modifier the the roll.
+2 childs play
+1 easy
+/- 0 normal
-1 difficult
...
- 4 master level
...
-10 godlike
-20 impossible

That way collecting more than +5 bonus still has its uses for a master of his trade.
So a skill roll so far includes:

About tools: They should only have a quality bonus if they are used for something where your skill does not give a bonus. For example, animal traps and weapon damage. Picks and crafting tools does not get any bonuses.

1. Well you should be able to earn XP in fights. I'm not sure how to best balance it though. Maybe a maximum of 1 XP per fight?

2. Oh shit, I forgot the food rations, I'll fix it at once. The 6 was rolled for the animal trap so you didn't get any XP for that.

Cooperative actions: Yeah, people should be able to fight monsters and stuff together. Houses are built in stages (like Ross wrote somewhere in thread) so a big house will take several actions. Not all tasks are suited for cooperation of course (three people forging the same sword sounds like a bad idea...).

Difficulty levels: Well it's kind of already in since you do better the higher you roll. A monster that is hard to sneak up on would have some skill like Listen +4 and people trying to sneak up on it would make a contested roll (sneaker tests Stealth, monster tests Listen, higher wins). About the sword, if you roll a 3 when forging you get a shoddy -1 sword, but if you roll a 3 while forging a kettle you just get a standard kettle (since tools don't get any quality bonus).

The way I understood the XP system was that you have 3 actions per day and for each action you thow the dice. So with every action you have a equal chance of 1/6th to earn XP. That would result in 1 XP every second day in average and one lvl-up in ten days.

If you rob certain tasks of their chance of giving XP, you manipulate the player's behavior. If he want's to earn XP, he is forced to ignore these tasks and do others that give more XP, like fighting, which has a theoretical chance to give one XP every turn for only one action spent.

So to keep the XP-system simple and fair, I would stick with what I described first and role a dice for every action, even if it is only moving to another region and you usually don't throw the die. If there is nothing to test per se, throw them nevertheless only to check if he earns the XP. You can learn much on a journey. So if you get a 6, the character found or experienced something unexpected that is worth an XP. Simple as that.

The GM's job in this is a little bit ridiculous and over-burdened; he's got a ton of bookkeeping to do, and dice-rolls for practically everything on the list.

If there's any way to lessen the burden, I'd suggest it mightily. Nobody else is ever going to successfully run a game of this without giving themselves a headache every time they sit down to post a round.

I'd suggest allocating a little bit of the bookkeeping to each player, and having THEM make some of the rolls. The GM would still handle all of the world events (to include combat, which I agree also needs to be reworked slightly), but the players could, say, roll for their own traps and post that information with their own turns.

Olothontor wrote:The GM's job in this is a little bit ridiculous and over-burdened; he's got a ton of bookkeeping to do, and dice-rolls for practically everything on the list.

If there's any way to lessen the burden, I'd suggest it mightily. Nobody else is ever going to successfully run a game of this without giving themselves a headache every time they sit down to post a round.

I'd suggest allocating a little bit of the bookkeeping to each player, and having THEM make some of the rolls. The GM would still handle all of the world events (to include combat, which I agree also needs to be reworked slightly), but the players could, say, roll for their own traps and post that information with their own turns.

I agree with you that the system as it is now is a heavy burden on the GM. Three d6 for each player each turn/day allone is hard enough when there are more than just a few players. As if this wasn't enough, he has to keep track of the inventory of every player.

But giving too much power into the hands of players opens opportunities for cheating. "Woot, for today I rolled only 6es! Again! Lucky me!" And that would very soon kill the game.

It's the old conflict in PRG: Freedom vs. playability.
The less rules exist the more freedom the players have in their actions but the heavier is the burden on the GM.
And if you want to let the players do more in their own, you have to give them a very tight set of rules to keep things balanced. If players got the power to create new elements in the game - let's take a steam engine for example - and make up his own set of rules for them, you an bet that steam engines are the solution to everthing and the next day the player has his own army of steam driven soldier clanks.

The hell, we even can't agree how often a simple spike trap for animals can be used.

One solution would be to come up with some basic guidelines instead of formulating a rule for every if and when - just like in the Brikwars rules, where the stats of every thing on the field is derived by the same set of formulas.
Gathering resources is a fundamental part of the game. And there are different means to do so for every kind of resource. To produce food, you can hunt or trap wild animals, gather wild plants, but you can also set up a farm and grow crops and breed cattle. The later ones definitely have advantages to the former ones, otherwise we would still live in the woods. How do we reflect that in the rules? Every bit of resource invested in the method of production has to pay off in the long run - or at last have the chance to do so.
A hunters stand is build in one action and needs some wood and it should simplify the hunt. After some days the hunter schould have gathered more meat than his comrade who used the primitive method.

The hard part is to come up with balanced numbers.
The simple method (unskilled) produces about 1.7 units of recource, 3.5 at a skill of 2. So for each action you use for preparations, you should be rewarded with more than 4 units of recource in average when it finally paiys off. The amount of other recources such as wood that were used for the preparations should also be considered, let's say in a ratio of 1.5.

So it is not important exactly what kind of preparations you use, but how much you invest. In that context, your HP also are a kind of recource, and reducing the probability to lose HP in a fight (i.e. while hunting) is also a bonus, preparations can achieve.

The longer the temporal bonus lasts, the smaler is the particular bonus to each usage, but the greater it is when you sum it up.
A farm needs time to set up, but once you have tilled the fields, they produce food with a constant and reliable rate as long as you attend to them. Maybe the farm doesn't produce much more than a successfull hunt, but you don't get hurt and your prey will not die out as wild animals do when you hunt to often.

I'ds like to discuss the "trapping" skill on this background. So far I wasn't too successfull with that: I spent 3 actions where solvess only used one and in the end had the same reward. Maybe if I could set up and inspect several traps simultaniously and reuse them more often, but with a smaller chance of success, things could be balanced.